High electrostatic charges in various fibrous materials such as hair and clothing cause undesirable effects such as clinging or repelling of the fibers. For example, in the laundry detergent field, numerous attempts have been made to formulate laundry detergent compositions which provide the good cleaning performance expected of them and which also have good textile conditioning properties. For example, attempts have been made to incorporate cationic textile conditioners in anionic surfactant-based built detergent compositions employing various means of overcoming the natural interaction between the anionic surfactants and cationic conditioners. For instance, U.S. Pat. No. 3,936,537, Baskerville et al., issued Feb. 3, 1976, discloses detergent compositions comprising organic surfactant, builders, and, in particulate form (10 to 500 microns), a quaternary ammonium softener combined with a poorly water-soluble dispersion inhibitor which inhibits premature dispersion of the cationic in the wash liquor. Even in these compositions some compromise between cleaning and softening effectiveness has to be accepted. Another approach to provide detergent compositions with softening ability has been to employ nonionic surfactants (instead of anionic surfactants) with cationic softeners. Compositions of this type have been described in, for example, German Patent 1,220,956, assigned to Henkel, issued Apr. 4, 1964; and in U.S. Pat. No. 3,607,763, Salmen et al., issued Sept. 21, 1971. However, the detergency benefits of nonionic surfactants are inferior to those of anionic surfactants, so overall performance suffers.
Other laundry detergent compositions have employed tertiary amines along with anionic surfactants to act as textile conditioners. British Pat. No. 1,514,276, Kengon, published June 14, 1978, employs certain tertiary amines with two long chain alkyl or alkenyl groups and one short chain alkyl group. These amines are useful as fabric softeners in detergent compositions when their isoelectric point is such that they are present as a dispersion of negatively charged droplets in the normally alkaline wash liquor, and in a more cationic form at the lower pH of a rinse liquor, and so become substantive to fabrics. The use of such amines, among others, in detergent compositions has also been previously disclosed in British Pat. No. 1,286,054, assigned to Colgate-Palmolive, published Aug. 16, 1972, British Pat. No. 1,514,276, assigned to Unilever, published June 14, 1978, and in U.S. Pat. No. 4,375,416, Crisp et al., issued Mar. 1, 1983.
Another approach to provide anionic detergent compositions with textile softening ability has been the use of smectite-type clays, as described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,062,647, Storm et al., issued Dec. 13, 1977. These compositions, although they clean well, require large contents of clay for effective softening. The use of clay together with a water-insoluble cationic compound and an electrically conductive metal salt as a softening composition adapted for use with anionic, nonionic, zwitterionic and amphoteric surfactants has been described in British Pat. No. 1,483,627, assigned to Procter & Gamble, published Aug. 24, 1977.
British Patent Applications 1,077,103 and 1,077,104, assigned to Bayer, published July 26, 1967, disclose amine-anionic surfactant ion-pair complexes useful as antistatic agents. These complexes are applied directly to the fabric from an aqueous carrier. Fatty acid-amine ion-pair complexes in granular detergents are disclosed in European Patent Application 133,804, Burckett-St. Laurent et al., published June 3, 1985.
Other methods of conditioning fabrics include adding fabric conditioners during the rinse cycle of the washing process and also adding a conditioner during the drying process. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,233,164, Davis, issued Nov. 11, 1980.
While shampoos which contain conditioning aids have been disclosed, they have not been totally satisfactory for a variety of reasons. As with laundry detergent/softener combinations, there are compatibility problems between good cleaning anionic surfactants and the hair conditioning agents which are generally cationic. To alleviate this undesirable interaction, other surfactants, such as nonionics, amphoterics and zwitterionics, were examined by workers in the field. These efforts are reflected in patents issued in the conditioning shampoo area. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,849,348, issued Nov. 19, 1974 to Hewitt and U.S. Pat. No. 3,822,312, issued July 2, 1974 to Sato.
The use of these non-anionic surfactants solved many of the compatibility problems but still did not provide complete answers in all areas. For instance, none of these approaches effectively solved the problem of "fly-away" hair caused by electrostatic charge. It clearly would be highly desirable to be able to formulate a shampoo which provides both effective cleaning and hair conditioning benefits.
Surprisingly, it has been found that certain ion-pair wax composites are excellent conditioning agents when applied alone, or when used with various carriers such as washer-added and dryer-added sheets, shampoos or laundry detergents. Additionally, these composites are stable when used in detergent compositions, even those containing very aggressive surfactants such as the alkyl sulfates and alkyl ethoxylated sulfates.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide ion-pair wax composites with superior conditioning properties.
A further object of the present invention is to provide compositions, such as shampoos, laundry detergents and washer-added and dryer-added fabric conditioners with excellent conditioning properties.
A further object of the present invention is to provide conditioning agents which can be used in laundry detergents containing very aggressive detergent surfactants such as the alkyl sulfates and the alkyl ethoxylated sulfates.